| Under the patriarchal ruling system, Chinese youngsters had always been overlooked and found no position in the mainstream society. However, in late imperial China, Chinese youngsters claimed unprecedented attention and the word "Shao Nian" became very popular. Fiction translation in late Qing played an important role in establishing new image of youngsters. There are numerous studies about translation literature of late Qing Dynasty, however, few of them concentrates on the genre of juvenile fictions or images of youth in translations. And those characteristics of youth demonstrated in late-Qing translations of juvenile fictions were not appreciated by the traditional Chinese society, largely due to the historical background of late Qing and translators’translation strategy. The paper, taking Liang Qichao’s translation of Deux ans de vacances, Bao Tianxiao’s translation of Cuore, and Lin Shu’s translation of The People of the Mist as objects of study, aims at summarizing the characteristics of youngsters highlighted by translators.The three translations targeted youngsters as readers, and were quite popular readings at that time. By reviewing the historical background of the boy literature in late Qing, it’s clear that the common expectations of youngsters were influenced by multiple factors such as the association of youngsters with Chinese nationalism, reflection on Chinese characteristics and Japan’s influence. According to the study of the original texts and their corresponding translations, the paper finds that youngsters in the three translations show some similarities. They all possessed the spirits of adventurism, militarism and democracy, which traditional Chinese young scholars didn’t have, but were the very virtues of "Xin Min"(new citizen) advocated by Liang Qichao when China was threatened by imperial powers. Hopefully the study of the three translations in the paper may shed some light on the study of boys’image in the juvenile literature of late Qing Dynasty. |
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